Issuu

Foreword

I am grateful to be able to write, create & put together art that can be shared both in print & digital, & appreciate the efforts of those who have come before me to allow for this to happen. I am nothing without the incredible efforts of my contributors who fill the pages & those who have given me constant support throughout putting this together. This zine is a culmination of work across months. So many emails, Instagram messages, phone calls, test prints at my work, uses of the word ‘snazzy’ & ‘funky’, indecision, procrastination, decision. This is the output of twenty-four people. Seeing it all come together in what many may view as just this teeny A5 booklet means everything to me. This work, much like everything else I create, is produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded & this land always was & always will be Aboriginal land. Thank you for your care, - Stephen

UNITE ZINE ISSUE #1 Contents 1 2 3 5 6 7 9 10 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 23 25 26

hot glue // Tim Loveday ME // Jessica Fanwong I want to be here with you // Spencer .MFR bevy // Wildes Lawler Eternity // Jessica Rijs A Song On A Train // Jaidyn Luke Attard Wayfarer and Child // Lauren McKenzie How to make paper hydrangeas // Myan Nguyen untitled self-portrait // Baillie Jackson Ode to Summer // Annabelle Brown Raspberry Lemonade // Lily Knight like a love song, baby // Xiaole Zhan AN ECHO FROM A NARCISSIST // Evan Goulios thinking about ice-cream // Panda Wong I have written // Stephen Zavitsanos A Round of Unity & Unite Mosaic // Brie Bartleet The Gravity // Karen Richards United in headwind, ink // Scott-Patrick Mitchell

hot glue

by Tim Loveday some days these poems will not come –

hot glue in the gut. the root that reaches

for the bird, as if the bird were already buried. as if the clouds were its burial. here, you can

see only an absence: a branch that bears no fruit watches the hole in the sky, as if the purpose were to have made, not in the making. as if becoming isn’t its own poetry.

Artwork: Spencer .MFR

by Jessica Fanwong if I see the sunset beyond me,

my ephemeral spirit haunts me, and the horizon seems way too far,

and too vast for the speck I call me, with every climb and fall of the moon,

humanity’s thread’s every weave - me gets lost and obscured and meaningless me - is erased everyday ‘til me

hardly knows what the two letters mean, that bar infinity’s gates from ME.

Artwork: Kien-Ling Liem

Written & illustrated by: Spencer .MFR

bevy

by Wildes Lawler I cannot circle the lake without meeting the black swans. their wings fan out into the shape of white knives. their beaks are carmine red. eyes, the same dangerous shade. their wet hiss targets children from the reeds, and chases them through the tall grass. but to watch them file out of the algae, with the cotton cygnets at their tails, or on their backs, is beautiful. their necks break on the oars of row boats, and they will walk. the road tar heats, and they will drag their feet through its thick. they ‘target’ because they know their carmine eyes are bullseyes. sometimes I think my own mother may be a black swan. that thought makes her even more loving in my mind, as I have never seen a lone black swan or a lone cygnet.

Artwork: VV

Eternity

by Jessica Rijs If I could open up your heart and feed with the blood that you love with, I would.

The thought of you moving away Beyond me…

The inconsolable truth

rips at my flesh that needs your touch to survive.

I crawl out of the womb of my depression

to make sure that you are coping with yours.

We laugh at things that make us cry. We share hurt in different places, from different oceans.

But with you it is not a competition. You are in a league of your own.

We are bonded by fire, wind, and water. The earth brought us together.

Miss Universe is our mother and

we shared her in those dawning moments.

Substances making their way out of our veins

into parts of us formed a lifetime ago– that will be there for lifetimes more. The love that is eternal

is one that I found so young.

How lucky to have been loved by you; my sun,

my waking breath.

Find me in this garden we nurtured and give me your self. Artwork: Evan Goulios

Artwork: Joe Hosking

A Song On A Train by Jaidyn Luke Attard

On the train to work this morning a man was singing his heart out;

the people stared and turned away and thought the man obnoxious. I didn’t know the words he sang I didn’t know the language;

I took his song as a good omen for a joyful day ahead.

A couple lingering by the door

asked the man what he was singing; ‘It is Oromo, my friend, I am singing

from the heart, not from the mouth!’ He is just what the carriage needed, a force of springy nature;

a songbird, a sermon-speaker and a spreader of unity.

‘Happiness is in the heart,’ he sang in broken English;

and then laughed to himself,

the happiest man on the train.

Wayfarer and Child by Lauren McKenzie

I wait for wayfarer in candlelight,

the glow turns darkness into her black fur,

young ears listen to tales of fight or flight, Fingers on her cards, drink tarot liqueur,

ignore the clock. At last, her worn apron

appears alone. I see mountain men flock. Milkmaid braids of kindly reputation,

found in an embrace of pummelling rock.

Smoke upon my cheek, draw a weathered card:

The Two of Cups for crimson soaking through, soft incense slips beneath my laughter guard.

Wayfarer holds me near and whispers true,

words gentle, clean up tears and blood of years, shared stories salve our lurking pains and fears

Artwork: Evan Goulios

untitled self-portrait by Baillie Jackson

An Ode to Summer by Annabelle Brown

The sun unfastens the horizon fraying

over deep craters As I sit in the kitchen

licking the plum that runs down my chin

the pit inside a crinkled napkin

Artwork: Charlie BB

Raspberry Lemonade by Lily Knight

Artwork: Joe Hosking

I remember being small and thinking the world was growing all around me. Growing in the cars on the highway that must have been going to my nan’s house because where else could they go? Only to be shocked to find out that there was more to life than her lemon squares and supermarket apple juice boxes. Growing in the hours spent saving lost faeries floating on wind and fighting back against the goblin king that lived behind the painted mural at my school, only to learn that there was no secret entrance hidden amongst those crystal carved cracks, just hard, empty, concrete. Growing in the way that slowly and surely the worlds, people and deep-rooted emotions built up over years of intense creative discourse became nothing more than playing pretend, and come on, surely you’re too old for that now. Growing in the way that I no longer got up to become a mermaid for endless hours with my friends because I was increasingly aware of the way my stomach looked in my bathing suit. Growing in the way my brother slowly stopped playing games with me after school and started spending more and more time locked in his room on his laptop. Growing in the way I stopped asking kids I had just met to be my best friend for the day because that wasn’t how it was done. What if they don’t like you? What if they hate you for it? Growing in the way that my teacher pulled me aside, hissing at me to stop writing my silly little stories and get it in my head that myths and worlds unknown were never going to get me through real, hard, life. Growing in the way that I caught the bus for the first time alone and had to walk twenty minutes after missing my stop because I didn’t know I had to press the button by the doors because my big brother always did that for me. Growing in the way that to this day I still sleep with a teddy bear, but I stopped for months when I started high school because you’re a young adult now, so act like it.

Growing in the way that I started to cry in the car after school because I found out that a group of girls in my year didn’t like me because I was too loud, too talkative, too much. I had never spoken to them before. Growing in the way that I quietened down because no one likes it when you talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Growing in the way that I am now no longer as little, no longer as proud, nor as loud, nor as infectiously and unabashedly giggly as I once was. I no longer put on dance performances for my family, or sing outside in the backyard at full pelt because I thought no one could hear me, or write in depth plans for novels late at night and plan a life of vigour and contented creation, or spend hours running around in drama class dreaming of being on a stage, of swimming in the deep, uncharted sea, of fighting on the masts of a pirate ship, of climbing to the top of the tree in my yard because I was going to be a fairy, so of course I had to learn how to deal with heights and leaves and those vicious springtime bees. Of brazenly loving sprinkle covered cake, and raspberry lemonade, and my nan’s chocolate shortbread, and pork buns, and honey toast and milkshakes and sand covered coffee scrolls on the Geelong foreshore before sprinting full steam ahead to the carousel above the waves, and caramel ice-cream before Tuesday night basketball with my Pa because it didn’t matter how eating made my thighs look, or how a blueberry muffin could soften the cut of my jaw, only that I could convince my mum to let me watch Winx Club on the TV instead of on the family laptop that night, or be up in time for Adventure Time on Saturday morning or – oh nothing, no don’t worry about it, what were you saying sorry? No seriously don’t mind me, I forgot what I was going to say anyway. It seemed to me that the world was shifting and expanding, but really, I was just getting smaller and narrower. As it grew, and grew, and now grows, and grows, without pause, without even a momentary breath of recognition, I can feel myself slipping into condensing, crumbling, dissipating disconnection. Perhaps the world was never really growing, perhaps I was big enough already in the back of that car staring out onto the passing traffic to powerfully meet everything it could throw at me, kicking and scratching at full force in a pink tulle skirt, sparkly sunglasses, cargo shorts, and hand-me-down runners. But I reduced myself, and gradually diminished everything I once held in high, joyful, esteem until everything and anything started to seem bigger and more paralysing than my uneven breaths could bare to inhale.

like a love song, baby by Xiaole Zhan

my heart is bruised blue and spotify-green // and your notification hangs unopened // like a jewel-drop of your blood //

from the ceiling of my phonescreen // you know i’ll keep a secret like // how i kept your eyelash //

stranded on the piano // on a white key // high D // deliberate as poetry //

glinting // like a comma set in amber // you know i’ll sing it like //

the tinny plastic music of //

stray nails // clattering across the floor // after i knocked them over // in the dollar store // like //

a voice through cheap speakers //

some anonymous song // i can’t remember // i don’t want nobody // i just want every body // you know // i’m like a city // or a vampire // i, i //

reveal myself at night // you know

i’m like wheels on your glow-in-the-dark sneakers // overpriced and abandoned

at someone else’s garage sale // like, like

a middle-school circle-yes/no-note // like, like you sucker-punched me right in my life // and i, i will always stutter with the cotton balls in my swollen

dentist-mouth// i, i will sing it like this, with a mouthful of

blood // and it’s all your fault— i loathe // i loathe you

Artwork: Kien-Ling Liem

Written & illustrated by: Evan Goulios

thinking about ice-cream by Panda Wong

could not believe how much ice cream there was at yr funeral the fever dream of yr death or the congealed skin of everything afterwards the simultaneous facts of yr quote unquote body & the mass consumption of ice cream could not believe how quickly you went from person to object an object to record to preserve to display Clarice Lispector asked if all objects are halted time I guess we are all bodies in the moment and objects in the making and for future reference, please refer to me in all correspondence as the body. dear, the body. the body, hope this finds you well. i look forward to hearing from u, the body. sincerely in these strange times, the body. my belief was something to suspend from a meat hook the ice-cream was something to do with our mouths yr life was something to flatten into a PowerPoint presentation concise for the purpose of ceremony in yr eulogy I wrote about the heart as a way to describe any part of the body that feels yeah yr absence is a wound to pick and pick along its edges sometimes army ants get stuck in a continuously rotating circle until they die of exhaustion commonly known as a death spiral I am urged to visualise the strange turn a dog makes when it’s about to sleep something cyclical about the way grief turns a person into a butterfly beating against the ribcage of the world I watch a YouTube video where the leader of Turkmenistan is doing donuts around a flaming gas crater called the Gateway to Hell to prove he is not dead god people can be such freaks about life never let me forget the spectacle of the living the spectacle of the dead Artwork by: Spencer .MFR

I have written

by Stephen Zavitsanos I have written these poems about wanting to change myself into a bug or fly to reach some sweet spot between burning to a crisp & feeling eternal tenderness.

I have written these poems about wanting to not have things to write about at all–

about seeking myself in the deepest of senses, hopping outside of my body

& pulling back my hair & making me someone I could even like. I have written these poems relentlessly as if to write is to speak so I had decided to give up on speaking altogether & found my silence.

I have written these poems without a person appearing in my head for so long it feels like I’m beginning to be disingenuous to those that see me.

I have written these poems that feel like eulogies climbing out of my throat,

words of worship that will run far more than I ever will. Words that are as much written in me as by me.

I have written

Artworks: Brie Bartleet

One step. What does it mean? Against the mega-scale racetrack that seems to have no end, is it worth anything? Yet sometimes a single step is the only thing an individual can do. Lao Tzu said that, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” When Neil Armstrong became the first human to land on the moon he described it as, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” No matter how small, the first step is always the hardest but also the most significant. It forms a unit which can be built up to “form an individual component of a larger or more complex whole” (Oxford Language). When was a time you tried something new? Did a simple decision you make lead you down to a different path than expected? Have you come across a minute thing in your everyday life that left you with a lasting impression? A conversation? A particularly unappealing dish? Someone’s reel of a napping kitty that zapped you out of a gloomy mood? Don’t underestimate the small things, give them the attention they deserve, bring them together, combine them… UNITE them. - Jessica Fanwong

Artworks: Brie Bartleet

The Gravity The Gravity by Karenthe Richards I remember sound of sneakers I rememberon the concrete sound concrete everyof sneakers stride, on with a smile every stride, with a smile as the four of us as the four of us pounded pavements pounded pavements rattling change jars rattling change jars pink ribbons blowing pink ribbons blowing in the breeze in the breeze with little understanding withoflittle understanding the gravity of it all now my footsteps of the gravity of it all barely make a sound nowthis mypilgrimage footsteps barely make a sound flanked by ghosts, warriors and survivors this pilgrimage can’t hold a candle flanked by ghosts, to the price we pay warriors survivors for theand disease them all away. can'twhich holdtook a candle to the price we pay for the disease Artwork: VV which took them all away.

United in headwind, ink

by Scott-Patrick Mitchell It’s been a decade. Her, gone. Transvacuolar lymphoma. Cancer of The Blood. Disease caught in the slipstream, travelling onward. Seven rounds of chemotherapy and still it could not be caught. The circulatory system – of artery, capillary and vein, laid end-to-end – can reach 100,000 kms. That’s a quarter of the way to the moon. Who knows how far her cancer travelled, hid, mutated, grew. At the end, my sister’s dementia took her back in time, 3652 days before her death. She passed not knowing why, just that she was ready. That day, our world died. My other sister is alive. On her fridge, a montage of our lost sister under the title WHY I RIDE. My other sister dons Lycra, straddles bike, pedals asphalt. This is not an attempt to outrun, but rather cycle toward and through. We all process grief in different ways. For example, my mother refuses to cry in front of us. Meanwhile, my other sister clocks kms: 33,650 in total. So far. So far, my other sister has nearly lapped the world, once. She is 6,350 kms short. So much math for all the ways we cope. So many miles left to travel before we feel whole, normal. If ever. If at all. Since my sister passed, I have written many poems about it. More about my mother, aging toward the end. All this loss, all this pre-grief. I ask Google how long a line of text is. She just shrugs. Maths fails us here. Instead, consider the line of a poem as extending indefinitely in both directions. How a line consists of infinitely many points. Such as: no poem will bring my sister back. Or: I can not undo the past. Or: I cry so often trying to hold this. While my other sister morphs into headwind, I crouch into ink. Both trying to find our way, without. Both united in making sense of the empty space in our lives. And as we move, the world is reborn.

UNITE ZINE ISSUE #1

Editor: Stephen Zavitsanos Co-Editors: Oliver Jackson & Juliana Neild

Contributors: Tim Loveday, Jessica Fanwong, Spencer .MFR, Wildes Lawler, Jessica Rijs, Jaidyn Luke Attard, Joe Hosking, Lauren McKenzie, Myan Nguyen, Xiaole Zhan, Baillie Jackson, Annabelle Brown, Lily Knight, Brie Bartleet, Evan Goulios, Panda Wong, Karen Richards, Scott-Patrick Mitchell, Kien-Ling Liem, Charlie BB, VV. Panda Wong’s ‘thinking about ice-cream’ was originally released on her debut EP salmon cannon me into the abyss (2022). This project is made possible by Multicultural Arts Victoria, the Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and the Sustaining Creative Workers initiative. The Sustaining Creative Workers Initiative is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and Regional Arts Victoria.